The Lunesta butterfly is the butterfly of death.

Every time that I one of those creepy commercials, it looks like the butterfly/moth is killing the person. I guess that it was just truth in advertising.

A new study suggests that the 6% to 10% of Americans who use prescription sleep medications such as zolpidem (Ambien), temazepam (Restoril), eszopiclone (Lunesta) and zaleplon (Sonata) are more likely to develop cancer, and far more likely to die prematurely, than those who take no sleep aids.

The increased rates kick in at really low levels too, the study says. For those prescribed as few as one to 18 sleeping pills in a year, deaths during the period of the new study were more than three and a half times greater than for those who got no such prescriptions, the study says. And for patients who took home the largest number of prescriptions for sleep aids--for more than 132 pills per year--the risk of death was five times greater than among those who appeared to take no sleep aids, according to the study.

wife wants me to take that **** because of my insomnia. I made the mistake of taking Tylenol PM a couple of nights in a row just to get some sleep, and paid for it for the next 5 days. Once you start taking it, you can;t stop or you get no sleep for the next week. Better to figure out what's causing the insomnia in the first place. I need to get on that

Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence - John Locke

Dude, correlation does not equal causation. This isn't even real science, it's just... I don't know, looking at numbers.

It's not just "looking at numbers". Yes, correlation is not causation, but given good methods one can say that correlation indicates that causation should be looked into with further studies.

If you read the link you will see that they had a good sample size, and did a case/control matched sample.

Conducted by researchers from Scripps and the Jackson Hole Center for Preventive Medicine in Jackson, Wy., the study tracked 10,531 patients given prescriptions for hypnotic sedatives for at least three months and for as long as four years. For comparison, researchers matched each patient prescribed with a sleep aid with at least two patients of similar age, gender and health status who had no record of having had sleep aids prescribed.

So, over 10k prescribed, and over 20k not prescribed. Pretty standard epidemiological investigation, to my eyes at least and going just from the linked story.

well, part of it has to do with the one year old that gets up at 4:30, but there's more.

Whenever the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence - John Locke

Go to askapatient.com and read the reviews on Ambien. Hilarious. At least, the reviews from before they changed the formula- people were doing things in their sleep, like driving, shopping online, mostly eating weird things. A couple of examples:

I've had sex, cooked, cleaned, emailed, texted, phoned and even settled arguments with no memory of it happening the day after. So far the side effects are somewhat funny but I'd start to worry when it starts to get dangerous. That aside, it is by far the best solution to my sleep problems.

My most recent experience with the drug is that I had a very vivid hallucination of James Earl Jones tucking me into bed. He talked to me and told me that I was going to be OK. If I did not know better, I would swear that he was there. I take the drug pretty infrequently but seem to be having more and more strange side effects with each use. I like the drug but am afraid I am through after the Darth Vader experience.

On my way to Arizona I felt like I was on the moon bouncing in low gravity. Then suddenly I was in my bathroom and Andrew Jackson (twenty dollar bill) came out of the tub and tried to eat me. I ran to my bedroom and realized that I was in touch with everyone on the planet and I could see the collective consciousness of the whole world. I woke up the next day naked on my couch.

If I took one and stayed awake (waiting to get sleepy), I did the wierdest things. Apparently you get the munchies big time because I would wake up the next morning finding food all over the place, but no recollection of making anything. It was only the following morning after seeing an empty aluminum tray and a fork that I realized I made a three pound family-sized lasagna dinner. One morning I found a pot of boiling macaroni (thank God the house didn't burn down). One night I found myself at the Wendy's drive thru and no clue how I got there. I've awakend on my neighbor's couch watching a movie, and don't know whether I was invited or just walked over (I left before she woke up).

wife wants me to take that **** because of my insomnia. I made the mistake of taking Tylenol PM a couple of nights in a row just to get some sleep, and paid for it for the next 5 days. Once you start taking it, you can;t stop or you get no sleep for the next week.

A few years ago I was going to take my first trip to china for work. A co worker who had done the trip a number of times before recommended Tylenol PM for the flight. Picked some up the week before I went, and decided to make a trial run one night. In my mind an airplane is a bad place to find out something like Tylenol PM does weird stuff to you. So glad I did, it had me bouncing off the walls all night. Could not force my mind to slow down let alone get any sleep. About 6am I crashed hard. The next day at work 5-6 people commented to me about how drowsy I looked.